Category: TinyTeaches

How do you recognise good writing? It’s clean, well thought out, and well edited. Now, great writing. That’s another story. Great writing lives and breathes. It grabs you by the neck and drags you down the page. But how can you make a piece of writing truly stand out? The important thing to remember is… Read more

Who is the awesomest writer of them all? Think you know the answer? Let me give you a hint: there is no such thing. Wow, Jasmine, you sure do give good pep talks. Actually, I usually do. But it’s a fact. Recently, I was talking to one of the Inklings (that’s what we call… Read more

We all know them. Or know of them. Those people whose parents can not only afford to give them anything and everything they could possibly ever need, they also provide them. Right? I bet a name just popped in to your head as you were reading. These people have had nothing but tail wind in… Read more

In Part 1 of this article, we compared writing to painting. We discussed the basic tenses you’ll work with. Your primary colours, if you will. In Part 2, we mixed things up, creating a richer palette, with lots of subtle shades at our disposal. Today, let’s expand our palette even more. We’re going to have… Read more

In Part 1 of this article, we compared writing to painting. We discussed the basic tenses you’ll work with. Your primary colours, if you will. Let’s mix things up and create a palette of subtle shades that will add nuance and depth to your story. To Infinity and Beyond! One thing we can… Read more

Last week, you and I had a chat about different POVs in writing. Remember? if you didn’t, you can catch up on that one over here. We discussed the main pros and cons of both limited and omniscient POV and I promised you I would do more detailed posts on both. I’m beginning to doubt the… Read more

OK, people. Let’s make a deal. Next time I ask everyone what the next subject for a TinyTeaches article should be, please tell me to stop. “Oh, Tiny! I’d love for you to do a post on different POVs.” Me: “Sure! No problem! Hold my drink.” Yeah. That’s me up there. Remind me to not… Read more

Adverbs are an easy way of describing something. But like dialogue tags, they suffer from overuse. You could compare adverbs to nutmeg—best used in moderation. Extreme moderation. Let’s Have a Closer Look First of all. I had to look up what an adverb is. Wait, no. That came out wrong. I know what an adverb is… Read more

One of the biggest challenges in writing fiction, in my opinion, is the interaction of our characters. How do we portray them? They need to come alive for the reader. They need to be believable. Dialogue is a big part of that. We can use conversations between people to learn more about them, and about… Read more

There’s a little thing I’d like to discuss with all of you. We’ve all been guilty of it at some point. Maybe someone pointed it out to us afterwards. Maybe we discovered it ourselves. Who knows how many are still out there, lurking in all the lines we’ve ever written. Tiny! Get to the point!… Read more